


A No-Hopers' Failure Party

by LorienofLoth



Series: If I could only bring them home [4]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: 70th Hunger Games, Friendship, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 08:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorienofLoth/pseuds/LorienofLoth
Summary: In which absolutely nothing is resolved, and no-one is really mourned, but a lot of alcohol is consumed. For Victors, that's pretty much the same thing, right?





	A No-Hopers' Failure Party

Chaff isn’t sure if he hates the ones who could have been his more, or the ones who couldn’t. He’s half a bottle of whiskey into the newest Victor interview and he shouldn’t be watching it, should be with Seeder or Haymitch, a no-hopers’ failure party. But instead he’s swigging whiskey and watching Annie Cresta fall to pieces on stage.

            Flickerman had started off gentle, more so than usual, and it’s not like Chaff can’t guess why. They all left the arena fucked, but there’s a reason Mags hasn’t been seen since the Games ended, and even watching the telly, even as drunk as he is, Chaff can spot the wide pupils with no focus at all, can see that she’s probably on more drugs than all of Six combined.

            It’s not enough.

            Flickerman says something—Chaff doesn’t catch what—and she starts crying. Not the pretty tears of a girl from One—a single tear that gleams under the harsh lights of the stage. No, these tears are harsh and real and ugly.

            Does Chaff hate the ones who could have been his more, or the ones who couldn’t?

            This year could have been his. Barley was as likely to win as Chaff had been, or Seeder, or Angus from Ten, or Phillips from Six, until the flood. She’d probably never seen more water than could fit in a bathtub. She’d had no chance against a surge of water that had uprooted fifty-foot trees.

            Mags ushers Annie off-stage. Flickerman is talking, babbling nonsense in an effort to cover what a fuck-up this has been. Heads will be rolling somewhere. Serves them fucking right.

            He suddenly can’t be bothered with this room, shiny and bright and too clean. He’s been coming to the Capitol for over twenty years and he’s still not used to it. Doesn’t want to be used to it either. He picks up the whiskey instead, swallows down most of what’s left before tossing it at the white sofa. The liquid spills out, brown and sticky. It doesn’t matter. The sofa will probably be replaced by the time he gets back.

            He sees the door to the stairwell closing as he steps into the corridor, but ignores it. No-one cares if his body is in peak condition, and he isn’t obsessive about keeping it that way either. He wasn’t an athlete when he went into the arena and he did fine.

            The lift is fast and smooth enough to feel motionless. Sickle hadn’t been able to believe it was moving, had been surprised when the doors opened to reveal a different corridor to the one he’d entered on, but then he’d been in a lift before, back in Eleven. Chaff has too, for some bullshit district exploration vid that he’d done for some well-connected wannabe filmmaker who wanted to be authentic. The lift in Eleven is in the water tower, and takes maybe fifteen minutes to travel less than half of the distance of this one. It had stopped twice too, when Chaff had been in it, once plunging an alarming half a metre after stopping. Chaff had wondered at the time if that was going to make it into the film. Not enough to watch it though.

            Brutus comes out of the stairwell as Chaff is getting out of the lift, and for a moment he amuses himself by imagining that Brutus had climbed the stairs as quickly as the lift had carried him, and it means he’s smiling as he nods at the man. Well, not actively grimacing anyway. Chaff doesn’t have any time for Brutus even on a good day, but his girl had clubbed Brutus’ boy to death with a smile on her face, so while he still doesn’t want the man at the no-hopers’ failure party he’s trying to find, he can be civil.

            Brutus nods back at him easily enough, and if there’s one thing that can be said about the man it’s that he’s at least consistent with the shit he spouts. Chaff once heard him say to some baby Victor that nothing they did in the arena counted, like they don’t all know who has whose blood under their fingernails, and he’d barely resisted telling the kid that that was the stupidest thing ever said, but Brutus does seem to believe it.

            Heading into the common room offers more the company he was looking for. Haymitch and Angus are both clearly several drinks in and worse for the wear, Poppy is clearly in her own fucking universe as ever, and Cecilia is chatting easily with Leo.

            A no-hopers’ failure party.

            ‘Hey Chaff,’ Angus greets him easily, waving his drink easily. According to Cora Angus never drinks in Ten, and he never drinks in the Capitol when his kids are alive either, which makes him the biggest fucking lightweight in the interim. ‘I made cocktails. Fancy one?’

            ‘They’re almost okay if you add whiskey,’ Haymitch adds, tipping a generous measure in before sliding it over to him. Chaff takes a swig from it as he sits down; it doesn’t taste of anything, but that’s probably more an indication of his level of sobriety than a judgement of the drink. Haymitch isn’t exactly known for his exacting tastes when it comes to liquor.

            ‘Shame about your girl,’ Haymitch says. ‘Without the flood, she might have had a chance.’

            ‘I liked her,’ Angus adds.

            ‘Doesn’t matter now, does it?’

            It’s a conversation they’ve had before. It’s not like their kids are totally hopeless every year—Barley hadn’t been hopeless, could have won, in a different arena—Eleven builds tough kids, kids who are used to fighting to survive even if they’ve never wrapped their hands around someone’s throat and watched the life drain from them like the kids from One and Two, even if they are starving and battered. Even Twelve, where the kids don’t even have the experience of working in the fields, where they don’t even know how to climb a fucking tree, what the fuck, they get the odd kid who could, theoretically, have a chance. Kids win with one or two kills, they win after hiding in trees or outrunning mutts or fucking treading water while kids who’ve never learnt to swim are dragged under and don’t resurface for hours, but it’s never their kids.

            Angus pours himself another drink. He’s in a slightly better position than they are—he didn’t win until the latter end of the Fifties, so Ten aren’t too hopeless yet—but he’s never had a kid live either, so who wants to fight years, really?

            ‘I saw Cresta being escorted off for her interview,’ Angus says. ‘She seems okay.’

            Haymitch laughs harshly. ‘She’s fucked in the head, even for one of us. Did you see her interview?’

            ‘Hardly the perfect killing school champion,’ Chaff adds. And the fucking unfairness of that too, because Annie Cresta had had all of the advantages that Barley hadn’t, or Cane, or Mariposa, or any of the kids he’d ever had who might have had a chance at winning. She’d had a nine from the Gamemakers and a knack with the sponsors and a way with a knife. And then when it had all gone wrong she’d still managed a fucking chance win, like Four needed it.

            ‘Heads will roll for that. Can’t have a Career who screams at the sight of blood winning; what sort of television is that?’

            ‘I don’t know,’ Haymitch disagrees. ‘It’s a new drama; killers who are fucked up by it.’

            Chaff waves a hand around; this is the no-hopers’ party and still they must have thirty kills between them, or near enough. ‘Because they’re thin on the ground around here.’

            Haymitch shrugs and refills his glass, holding up for a toast.

            ‘To fucked up killers then.’

            All three of them down their drinks.


End file.
